Posted on 04/16/2013 8:05:07 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If you are old enough to have experienced it, you probably had that moment in the ’90s or early 2000s when you realized everything was about to change.
The sweeping Internet was changing music, reading, how we processed information, even the words we used to communicate. The change was fundamental and it happened so quickly, many of us had to catch our breath and keep ourselves from getting dizzy when we realized its significance.
It may sound like hype, and I’ll try to avoid overstating it, but a lot of us who write about where technology is going are starting to feel the same kind of change in the air. It’s because of another emerging technology that will likely rush in and modify our daily lives before we even know it’s happening: 3-D printing.
At this year’s South by Southwest Interactive, 3-D printing was the subject of panels, workshops and a well-received opening remarks session from Bre Pettis, a former teacher who now runs a 3-D printer company called MakerBot. Pettis did a nice job explaining the significance and practical applications of 3-D printing without sounding like a salesman.
In addition to toys, trinkets and plastic do-dads like replacement parts for home appliances, a 3-D printer can mass-produce medical tools and even prosthetic limbs for children. It can also make cheap parts to build firearms. Unlike some technologies touted at the festival, this one felt less like a possible future and more like an inevitability. It no longer feels like a matter of whether 3-D printers will come along and change our lives; it now seems like only a question of how soon.....
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
The only thing I know about it is that they will eventually screw you on the ink. Every new model will come with a smaller more expensive cartridge.
Chicoms are not going to like this.
except some clever soul had made a tool to convert soda bottles into ink.
Yeah, but the printers will eventually sell for $9.99.
Congress:
There’s no right to own a printer in the Constitution... after we ban guns, let’s ban printers and force all companies to use electronic/digital systems... this will help the environment, curtail the possibility of printing guns, and help establish a government access into private electronic-systems.
If I want to print out a document, I go to the library with my USB port and pay 15 cents a page.
When 3D printing comes of age it will devastate socialists!
Who needs government when a 3D printer that can even replicate itself can create food, electronics and nearly anything else.
It will negate the value of cheap Chinese labor.
Eventually it will create biological body parts and along with other types of nano-tech lead to near immortality.
Once the digital computer was conceived we were set on this inevitable path.
We are entering the rapid up-slope of the computer revolution..we are leaving the linear world behind...advancement is now exponential.
3D printing isn’t about documents.
And pay what in transportation costs?
I have been using 3D printing in my business for 3 years now.
We can create complex shapes in a CAD program out of a nylon type plastic that a customer buys from the printer and we get back a small fee for the design work. We never see or touch the part.
Fantastic results. The company we use is shapeways.
Waiting for the price of 3d scanners to come down. And they are starting to.
I never miss a title by Kurzweil :-)
He is brilliant. I think the drag of humans ablility to assimilate technological changes is delaying the singularity.
Makerbot is working on one
Did you see the New York Review of Books review of Kurzweil’s newest book? It is at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/mar/21/homunculism/
My husband’s artwork was used to illustrate the review (one on each page.)
We’ve been following 3-D printers at Maker Faire the last three years. I’ve picked up a few interesting 3-D printing examples, including a Klein bottle.
You can view some interesting objects created by 3-D printing along with other photos we took at the 2012 Maker Faire at http://blog.retrocollage.com/faire-collage-making/
Great book. I find his arguments in favor of his model of how the brain actually functions to be very persuasive.
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